Burkina Faso Roundup – 27 July 2022

Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Embaló, who currently doubles as the chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), visited Burkina Faso on July 24 accompanied by ECOWAS’ mediator for Burkina Faso, former Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou. The visit was a follow-up to the July 3 ECOWAS summit, where Burkina Faso’s post-coup transition was on the agenda (French); ECOWAS and the Burkinabè junta, led by Paul-Henri Damiba, continue to appear satisfied with the current twenty-four-month transition plan (which runs through July 2024. Here is the Burkinabè Presidency’s readout (French) of the visit, and here (French) is Embaló’s brief comment.

Former longtime President Blaise Compaoré (in power 1987-2014) returned to Burkina Faso for a few days earlier this month for a “reconciliation” meeting with Damiba and one other past head of state. On July 26, he issued a formal apology to the Burkinabè people and especially to the family of his widely beloved predecessor Thomas Sankara (in power 1983-1987). In April of this year, Compaoré was convicted in absentia of complicity in Sankara’s murder (in the coup that brought Compaoré to power) and received a life sentence that he appears very, very unlikely to serve. The author of a recent biography of Sankara, Brian Peterson, comments here.

Jeune Afrique (French; paywalled) has a brief discussion of the career of the most wanted Burkinabè jihadist leader, Jafar Dicko. Jihadist attacks continue, including the destruction of two bridges (French) on July 15-16 in the Sahel Region (one of Burkina Faso’s regions, not to be confused with the overall Sahel region of Africa).

A Ghanaian TV report on Burkinabè refugees arriving in northern Ghana:

Here is the International Organization for Migration’s latest report (French) on population movements within, into, and out of Burkina Faso.

French Ambassador Luc Hallade upset (French) the Burkinabè authorities and various civil society groups with his remarks to the French Senate on July 5. More here (French).

Sahelian governments should crack down on extremist preaching? Turns out it’s not so simple (French).

Radio Omega with a long report on the “quiet mourning” of military families who have lost someone:

Burkina Faso: Notes on HRW’s Latest Report on Jihadist Abuses

Human Rights Watch is out with a new report entitled “Burkina Faso: Armed Islamists Kill, Rape Civilians.” The subtitle is equally important – “Army, Militia Respond with Summary Executions, Enforced Disappearances.” The contents of the report will not be shocking to long-time watchers of Burkina Faso, but the report is a vital update. There were a few points that stood out to me:

• The report’s focus on rape highlights, once again, the wide gap between jihadist ideology and jihadist practice. The jihadist promise is one of a utopian counter-order based on their version of justice, which includes the idea that a jihadist state will bring safety and fairness for ordinary Muslims. In practice, jihadist predation and crimes of opportunity occur frequently: “A nurse from a village near Dablo said she had treated over 55 women who had been raped by armed Islamists between September and December 2021. ‘The women came from 11 villages,’ she said. ‘The terrorists attacked Muslims, Christians, and animists alike. They cried – they couldn’t eat or sleep and were too ashamed to tell their families what happened.'” Much research has been conducted on rape and gender-based violence as a “weapon of war” (and see more on this below), including the use of rape as a tool for punishing and driving away perceived outsiders, but use of that weapon obviously narrows whatever political appeal Burkina Faso’s jihadists may have for civilians in the country’s conflict zones.
• Relatedly, the HRW report points to a high degree of deliberate displacement by jihadists: “The attacks, said security analysts, appeared designed to compel widespread displacement from towns perceived to support the government, thereby consolidating armed group control from their strongholds in northern Burkina Faso to the central regions. Humanitarian workers expressed alarm at the dramatic pace of deterioration. Said one, ‘Civilian life is being suffocated as roads are mined; villages blockaded; markets closed; and water points, telecommunication, and electricity infrastructure sabotaged.'” If this is indeed the strategy – reduce the population, and then rule over what remains – it does indicate to me that there’s some exhaustion of the jihadist political project, an admission that they cannot win over the majority. On the other hand, it takes some level of political support to have the recruits necessary to execute such a strategy.
• The closing sections of the report, focusing on abuses by the army and by civilian fighters in the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (French acronym VDP), confirms earlier trends – collective punishment, ethnic profiling of the Peul, and government empowerment of the VDP but simultaneous VDP mistrust of the government (“describing one incident [of a VDP unit ethnically profiling and then killing accused jihadists], a VDP member said, ‘We used to turn suspects over to the gendarmes, but they always released them, so we decided to sort this problem out ourselves’…) Notably, although the report focuses on dynamics in the conflict zones rather than on macro-politics in Ouagadougou, the report conveys a sense of continuity of military and VDP practice before and after the January 2022 coup; in other words, the report describes abuses both in the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022. Current military President Paul-Henri Damiba has alluded vaguely to a new approach, but on the ground it does not appear that much has changed.

Burkina Faso/Mali: The Politics of a Visit from One Junta to Another

Burkina Faso and Mali are both under the control of military juntas – Burkina Faso since January 2022 and Mali since August 2020. Both juntas are under pressure to transition back to civilian rule, especially Mali’s. Since January, Mali has been under sweeping sanctions imposed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is attempting to compel a rapid transition after the Malian junta missed the initially agreed-upon eighteen-month window. Burkina Faso’s relations with ECOWAS are better, for the moment, because the Burkinabè junta is newer; but the junta there recently missed ECOWAS’ April 25 deadline for setting a rapid transition timetable (ECOWAS does not accept the Burkinabè junta’s 36-month plan).

From the moment of the coup in another West African country, Guinea, in September 2021 and especially since the coup in Burkina Faso in January, there has been a certain solidarity between West Africa’s three overt juntas (that solidarity does not extend in the same way to Chad, I would say, where the dynamics are quite different – although still a junta! Nor does it fully or necessarily extend to Mauritania which is arguably still under quasi-military rule). When sanctions hit Mali in January, Guinea’s military leader Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya made a point to declare that those two countries’ land border would remain open, calling Mali a “brother country” and evoking “the pan-Africanist vision.” Moreover, as journalists’ profiles of these figures often emphasize, there are generational similarities (born in the 1980s) and professional similarities (colonels, often from elite units) among the new West African coup-makers.

In this context it is interesting to see a delegation that Burkina Faso’s military ruler, President Paul-Henri Damiba, sent to Bamako to meet the Malian junta on April 22. The delegation included three top officers who are in Damiba’s “inner circle”: Serge Thierry Kiendrebeogo, Damiba’s chief of staff; Yves-Didier Bamoun, national theater operations commander, and Daba Naon, head of national firefighters’ brigade. The delegation met senior members of the Malian junta, including Malian President Assimi Goita, Defense Minister Sadio Camara, and National Transition Council* President Malick Diaw, all three of them key members of the junta. Separately, the Burkinabè delegation met Chief of Army Staff Oumar Diarra and Director of Military Security Moussa Toumani Koné.

The delegation’s main purpose, according to the official readout, was to “reaffirm their will [i.e., the will of the Burkinabè authorities] to continue military and security cooperation with Mali and to reinforce it especially through the intensification of operations on the ground.” Notably, the Burkinabè presidency mirrored recent rhetoric from the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) about FAMa’s “increase in power” (montée en puissance – see an example of that phrase’s usage by FAMa here). The official readout says, in part, “The ambition is to anticipate security problems that could cause a retreat of armed terrorist groups into Burkinabè territory, due to the increase in power of the Malian Defense and Security Forces in the struggle against terrorism, thus the interest to develop synergies for countering the forces of evil.” One could read a lot into these phrases. There is a cozying-up to the Malian junta, obviously, especially in the context of severe Malian-French tensions and the Malian junta’s keenness (desperation?) to prove itself militarily capable amid the partial French withdrawal from Malian territory. Yet there is also obviously a note of concern from the Burkina Faso side – there is no shortage of jihadist activity in Burkina Faso already, but it seems the Burkinabè authorities are indeed anticipating that the escalating brutality and outright massacres conducted by Malian forces and Russian mercenaries may cause some blowback for Burkina Faso. Then, finally, I suspect part of the politics of the visit involves Burkinabè authorities preparing for a future scenario where they, too, might be under full sanctions from ECOWAS, including the closure of land borders with all of their neighbors except, of course, Mali.

In another official readout, the Burkinabè delegation emphasized two other policy points. First is the idea that the transition back to civilian rule must go in the following order: “security – return of the displaced – elections.” That’s a message to ECOWAS, obviously. The second is the idea, highlighted by Damiba recently as well, that Burkina Faso’s security policy now rests on two main planks – counter-jihadist operations and a dialogue-based off-ramp. Here is the latest piece of reporting on the dialogue front by The New Humanitarian, which has been following that issue closely.

*This is the transitional legislative body in Mali.

Burkina Faso: President Damiba’s Visit to Troops in Barsalogho and Djibo

On Easter Sunday, Burkina Faso’s military ruler, President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, visited troops in Barsalogho (Center-North Region; map) and Djibo (Sahel Region; map). Both sites are deep in the country’s conflict zone – Barsalogho is the site of intermittent clashes with jihadists (recent example), and Djibo has been in and out of a jihadist-imposed blockade. Damiba’s visit appears intended to boost morale and make a show of authority.

Damiba, for context, took power in a coup d’état on January 23-24 of this year, overthrowing civilian President Roch Kaboré (elected 2015, re-elected 2020). He was declared president on February 16. The coup responded, in large part, to the severe insecurity and attendant displacement crisis that have bedeviled the country since 2016. One likely proximate trigger for the coup was the November 2021 attack on a gendarmerie outpost at Inata (map), a mine northeast of Djibo. If insecurity has been a justification cited by Sahelian coup-makers, however, current juntas’ records in dealing with insecurity are poor so far.

I have not found the text of Damiba’s remarks on these visits to Barsalogho and Djibo. According to the official readout from the presidency, at both stops he discussed the “two complementary pillars” of his administration’s strategy for combating insecurity. These pillars are “the military offensive against radical groups and the creation of a mechanism for dialogue with those who are in the frame of mind to reestablish dialogue with the Nation.” Coverage in the press adds little detail; most reports that I’ve seen are essentially rewrites of the presidency’s readout.

Dialogue with jihadists is a huge topic for Burkina Faso and for the Sahel as a whole. The best reporting I’ve seen on that topic has come from The New Humanitarian – see one of their pieces from late 2021 here. In general I think dialogue is a good idea. In this case I find Damiba’s remarks (or at least as paraphrased by the presidency) still quite vague. His inaugural address was similarly vague, including on the security brief. A strategy of applying pressure while presenting an off-ramp makes sense in the abstract, but much depends on who is viewed as suitable for dialogue – in one sense, Damiba’s strategy could be read as an analogue of Nigeria’s strategy of attempting to crush Boko Haram/Islamic State West Africa Province while holding out the military-run de-radicalization and surrender program “Operation Safe Corridor” as the offramp. That strategy has absorbed a good number of surrendering individuals, but has not transformed the conflict itself.

Meanwhile, the Burkinabè armed forces have conducted a recruitment drive to increase their ranks, currently estimated at 15,000-20,000 personnel, and have called up reservists. The immediate future, I think, still looks grim though.